I am fascinated by organizational psychology. As an armchair expert, this fascination is also a way for me to justify casual watercooler chats and gossip as being productive and thoughtful. Nevertheless, I have been fortunate to have worked in organizations (and roles) that valued structure and science or have worked with people who seemed to have a method to their madness. As a result, my approach to work has been shaped to be more surgical - where I find comfort in repeatable systems and structure to derive output vs. output being an outcome of a stroke of luck or genius (depending on the day) or just scattershot hustle.
All of these structures are at the end of the day a way to minimize either points of failure or if one has to fail, the intensity of failure (“losses loom larger than gains”). By virtue of the maturity of an org, its constituent people, objectives et.al these are evolving systems. But at their core, well-designed systems naturally make room for feedback and evolve according to that feedback. If they don’t, natural law forces them to make room or perish.
To be less meta, a Product manager (PM) might’ve seen some of these systems come up as the dogma of sprint plans and retrospectives. In any case, PM is a role with shorter-term feedback loops on the outcome of your work, but sharp organizations set up systems to measure all facets: input->output->outcome. In private market investing - which has much longer native feedback loops - these systems exist by measuring the quality of one’s thinking behind the deals you do and don’t (what hypothesis, did they play out / didn’t play out), retrospectives on fund processes (hiring, sourcing, etc) et.al. I use feedback loops as a broad term to mean a bunch of things - signals, outcomes, responses, reactions, and whatnot. All are feedback loops.
I believe if a decently sized organization doesn’t have feedback loops set up naturally, it is not compounding its biggest asset - its people. Orgs become institutions when they have great processes for scaling and investing in people. Akin to an assembly line of high-quality people.
Feedback loops come in two variants :
Man-made: Ones that the org in question has created themselves and measures with a certain regularity. E.g. OKRs, performance evaluation frameworks, outcome ownership structures, etc.
Natural: Almost involuntary reactions to certain actions and are most often a reflection of the leadership style of the founders/leaders. E.g. Resolving conflict, intellectual honesty in decision-making, response to mistakes, etc.
It's easier to be deliberate about man-made loops, and a lot of ink has been spilled writing about them (OKRs, measure what matters, etc.). Natural loops on the other hand often go undiagnosed. I use the word diagnose deliberately - they are harder to detect and change given they usually originate from the top. They might also feel like they are working until they don’t. But I will address the nuances of both of these and an evolving org. philosophy some other day.
Feedback loops in individuals
This feedback loop philosophy across orgs. has an actionable parallel to managing oneself. Now if one is on this endless quest of managing oneself (this is a big “IF”), the parallel might first translate to insight simping, scattered notes (across apps, notebooks), processes to organize them, calendar blocks for revisiting and summarizing them, and guilt trips on not revisiting them enough (more on some of these processes that I have found helpful at some other time). But I believe the better parallel is to shut down one’s auto-pilot mode and be deliberate about identifying and measuring your own feedback loops and then prioritizing which ones to listen to and iterate on. Some of these feedback loops can be as simple as a kind word from a friend/stranger you helped, a pat on the back from a manager at work, or just a feeling of accomplishment at being regular with a habit.
At this point, I run the risk of this post being labeled “repackaged mindfulness”. But where I think this articulation differs is it covers well on two counts where one could be most susceptible to failure or where the intensity could be highest (just as an org) :
Identifying and creating long-term feedback loops that get deprioritized in the day-to-day hustle and then come up as a sudden shock. Identification must be followed up by creating short-term markers to continue thinking about those loops
Noticing “natural” feedback loops (all those biases, triggers, and involuntary patterns that keep on repeating) and how they drone out other feedback loops, making one unidimensional
Identifying and measuring one’s feedback loops
While there is no correct way to go about identifying the right loops (feel free to close your eyes and think about 5 things that matter most to you OR just observe what you give time to over the next 2 weeks and how that differs from your touted ideal), one can think of these loops across an axis of time - immediate and long term. One can then be conscious of the weight of each loop in their life and create more tactical questions to measure progress across them. What this could look like is this :
Immediate loops: By default, these get the most mindshare and get prioritized to solve. The challenge with these loops is not identification and creation but recognizing how they intermingle with your natural feedback loops and accentuate short-term behavior that might lead to a deviation from your core goals. E.g. could be simple validation seeking (a natural feedback loop) that might show up as immediate feedback loops like valuing those casual pats on the back at work far too much, conflict avoidance / being too nice or just stretching yourself thin to keep up an active social life
Long-term loops: These are the trickiest to measure and have a habit of coming by as sudden shocks. Therefore the challenge here is to create immediate feedback loops out of these. E.g. would be loops in health, relationships, and softer “personality” things. At the risk of sounding boomer-ish to peers reading this, simple practices like activity trackers, and a yearly cadence of health checks could be a starting point to create immediate feedback loops here. Softer “personality” ones could simply mean being unidimensional for the longest time, getting too attached to a dimension, and running the risk of serious consternation when that dimension fails to be gratifying anymore (replace dimension with any aspect in life). These are all contextual to the reader, and simple reflection is your friend to help you figure these
Again, this is in no way meant to be a prescriptive post on what to prioritize in life. Rather, I believe that a reader stands to gain the most out of this way of thinking if they step back and list down what they want to prioritize, immediate + long-term feedback loops that would help them make progress towards that prioritization and then compare it with the loops that they are currently listening to / measuring. Yes, it might feel like OKRs for life.
In any case, as Nietzche says - every philosophy is a philosophy of a stage of life - and these frameworks might give in to something new or just crumble and make way for following the voice of intuition someday. Until then, this feels the way to be deliberate about curating life and exercising whatever little agency we have.
More thoughts on best practices for an org for a later day.